My cries echo over Reverend Packard’s farm, but my mom does nothing except whimper into her hands at the top of the driveway as they shut me inside and peel away.

CHAPTER TWO

ALL ABOARD

Ribbit. Frogs keep ribbiting under my head while I’m trying to get some sleep. My eyes creak open to a set of blurry streetlights crashing through the night outside, and dozens of car horns blare as the ribbiting continues to shake the van’s bench seats.

The van…

The only other sound is a low, industrial hum—a constant, unsettling tone.

Ribbit. When I was twelve, Mom and I escaped Florida for a quieter, churchier life in Ambrose. The expressway into Illinois vibrated our overly packed Hyundai…and the vibrations sounded like frogs ribbiting.

Ribbit.

We’re on an expressway. My heart swishes through my ribcage as I fully emerge from my dream and remember with horrifying clarity that I have been kidnapped. I spring up from the vinyl bench—the skin of my arm unsticking painfully in the sweltering heat—and recognize my abductors.

“Connor, you’re awake,” the masked British man greets me from the front bench. Only my kidnapper isn’t wearing his mask anymore. Whoever he is, he’s shockingly boyish, like a boybander who got old; his dark, cropped hair runs silver along the sides. A desperate moan spills out of my mouth as I swing at him, but his rough, calloused hand closes around mine. “It’s all right. My name is Ben Briggs.”

My heart refuses to settle. Breathe in through your nose, Connor. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

“How long have I been out?” I ask. It can’t have been long; I’m still in the cutoff hoodie and gym shorts I wore to bed.

“You’ve been drifting for an hour,” Briggs says. “You fainted, sorry to say—”

Seizing what little opportunity I have, I lunge for the door, my fingers scrabbling in a terrible, frantic search for the handle in the dim light of the van. Once again, Briggs pulls me back into his snare with a gentle, unhurried strength.

“No, no, no,” he whispers. “You don’t want to do that.”

I grunt, the back of my hand striking like a mallet against his temple, and he releases me to cup his stinging ear. I scramble again to the door as both the driver and the third kidnapper, who is in the front seat, yelp, “OI!” There’s negative ten seconds to act, but with a final burst of adrenaline, my fingers slip around the vertical paddle handle and the door groans open onto a burst of electric streetlight. I wince. Beneath my bare feet, the expressway rushes past in a hypnotic, white-gray blur. I’m momentarily stunned, my hands trembling in front of me.

Do I jump? Can I jump?

Cars sail by too quickly to pinpoint someone to flag down for help. I gather a single, powerful breath and bellow “HEL—” before Briggs’s paws close around my shoulders. I don’t squirm because I’m terrified of overbalancing and tumbling out, getting walloped underneath a dozen tires in the process. I careen backward, falling flat on my back onto the bench. With one large mitt pressed against my chest, Briggs holds me in place. With his other, he struggles the whining van door shut again.